


The Life We Knew Is Gone

by brokenmemento



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, F/F, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: She doesn't know what she intends to happen, but a coup of all of the mages isn't it. So many mistakes are made that day at Thanedd and Tissaia isn't quite sure what the future holds or whether she should have one at all.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 25
Kudos: 81





	1. Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> *Trying to get back to some things I have had started since before quarantine, so yay to that!  
> **Since I just finished the first book of the Witcher series, this is my "fix it" fic for what happens to Tissaia in the novels at the end. I just can't bear her narrative and wanted to circumvent that. With that being said, this IS going to be a little dark in spots and reference self-harm. Very heavy trigger warning, but it does go in line with the books to a certain point. Then I take that, mix it with show cannon, and tear the book narrative to shreds.

After it happens, no place on earth seems safe enough to hide. To get away. To leave the death and heartache and pain behind. 

She’d never meant to herald in a new era. She’d never meant to bring it all to the ground. Now she supposes her mistakes, her naivete for thinking that people can be reasoned with and that someone can be pulled away from a ledge when they are bent on jumping, will haunt her for a lifetime. 

The forest is dense and for miles around all she can see are trees. Birdsong winds throughout the canopy and the creek trickles slowly beneath her feet. _Not enough to drown in._

This fatalistic approach to life is the norm now, in large part to the replay of events that she gets in both her hours of waking and slumber. And maybe it’s because she’s never seen the merit of jumping that she stands yet alive with air filling her lungs and blood winding through her veins. Inside herself, there is no reconciliation. Deep down, there will never be retribution. She’s resigned herself to fading away alone, hidden from the eyes of the Continent. Once the most powerful magic user to walk the land, now self-exiled to wither away under no one’s gaze.

If she had a different mindset, she might busy herself with alchemy, herbalism. The puffballs cluster in the caves nearby, fool’s parsley lining the clearings and hugging against trees. In early spring, the pringrape bloom and the wild honeysuckle wind around long-forgotten carts destroyed by vagrants or looters, back when the forest held more promise and fewer monsters. 

Tissaia has never been afraid of the stories about where she has come to spend her days. It’s hard to care much for the evil and wild nature of things when she must rise every day and deal with herself, when she must look at her face in the mirror and know what has come to pass. It’s this sting of failure that she carries around always. The fact that she has essentially destroyed what she worked so hard to uphold, single-handedly, will never go away.

Yes, there’s Phillipa and Kiera and Triss and Sabrina to think about. There had been Ciri’s dead yellow eyes staring out as she told the surrounding bodies what Tissaia had bid her to. There were the shouts, the too loud passions and venom spilling from the mouths of the people she had come to know.

They had been on the brink of destruction before, but Tissaia had walked the final straw into the room, had yanked away the shield protecting them all simply because she _believed_ they could be better than they were.

Her misplaced hope had backfired considerably. To be laughed at in the face. To have to teleport that which was dear away from the nightmare playing in real time and run from the mess she had created. These are the thoughts that send her hands to her face and cover it from the world, the ones that form hot tears in her eyes and let wracking sobs convulse her entire body.

She falls to her knees in the creek water, uncaring of it clinging to the fabric of her dress. The years of not letting go, of holding back, fill her hands and she cries for every single time she has had to stuff it down and away in favor of poise. Of not letting on that she has been human underneath it all the whole time and feels the gravity of the world in the same way that everyone else does. The adopted control, the ingrained idea that weakness made lesser mages, is the attitude she has had to wear for decades.

Her bottle uncorks, much like the one she told Yennefer to forget many years ago. Another memory that aches. How long has it been since she’s seen the woman? 

The coup has been just as hard on her, Tissaia surmises. At her advice, Yennefer had brought forth the child of Elder blood. She had exposed the girl’s true nature and abilities to a room full of conflicted and battling mages. It had been tinder on fire. In the midst of it, they had lost one another. They’d never even gotten to say the things that needed said-and still haven't.

Tissaia has heard mixed reports on where Yennefer has gone to. It seems she’s in no hurry to be found either. But where Tissaia’s is out of necessity, Yennefer’s is out of choice. 

It’s wrong to wonder if she has taken Geralt with her, if they may currently lie wrapped around the other. And while a part of her fractures on the inside from the vision of the two of them together, she knows that if Yennefer is ever to have a sliver of happiness, it will probably be with the witcher. After all, what does she herself have to offer? She’s a disgraced mage who disappeared when things got to their toughest. She abandoned the life she had worked diligently to keep. And all for naught.

There’s even more talk when one takes the time to listen. And with endless hours to fill until she dies, that’s about all there is to do. The new dawn has shuffled in, Phillipa at the helm. Margarita and Kiera have joined. Even her beautiful and wonderful Sabrina and Triss. The remains of the women are taking over where the Brotherhood has failed. 

Tissaia stares out across the expanse of the forest and wonders if Yennefer has found her way to Montecalvo. They’d do well to have her although something in Tissaia says the woman will not be lured into anything. 

Oh, how her heart aches for that one. Yennefer was always different. From the moment they laid eyes on one another, Tissaia had known they were destined to change one another irrevocably. Now, what she would give to hold her in her arms. To run a hand along the curve of her cheek, feel her hot chaos brushing against her again, or tell her that the years are going to get long without the two of them going back and forth with one another. It’s this silence, she supposes, she must get used to.

Rising from her knees, she pays no mind to the mess she’s made of herself. Picking up her gloves from the ground, she decides to make her way back to her small cottage among the trees. It will do no good to wallow in self-pity so she might as well make better use of her time than bemoaning a past she cannot change.

The walk back is in a blur. She’s aware of her feet moving and of little else. Getting so entangled in herself is foolish. While she thinks she’s done a fairly good job of removing herself from the flow of the world, nothing is ever a guarantee. There could be something waiting in the trees, behind the trunks of them. Something lying in wait to take her from existence.

She’s heedless of this though. 

No amount of metaphorical self-flagellation can change the way life has turned out. Drifting through one dark thought after another, she barely processes the shock of pale purple as she walks the path back to her cabin. A weird sensation pulls her from under, makes her move her gaze to the side. 

Her lips part, a huff of disbelief escaping. Quickly, she makes her way toward the object. Its presence is confusing. Normally, they do not grow here. Tissaia has seen none of their kind around, the sole survivor in a forest full of competing growth. 

She snaps a sprig off, fingers the small and delicate purple flowers. Not one to believe in premonitions or put much stock in signs, Tissaia brings the petals to her chest and tries not to let herself fill up with hope. 

This proves just as futile as her dark thoughts earlier. She brings the sprig to her nose and inhales deeply. The sweet scent enters her and sends a sense of calm all throughout. The smell of lilac filters into her body and spreads warmly all around.


	2. The Coup and the Precipice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Addresses the events of The Time of Contempt but in my own version of events, as I've only used summaries to form my narrative for this chapter.
> 
> Warning still applies, as Sapkowski's Tissaia story isn't a pleasant one. Just know that I take her to the brink and pull her back from it. (Which is what he should have done. But whatever)

“Another day, another drab ball,” Yennefer sighed and flicked a finger at the hem of her dress lying on Tissaia’s bed.

“The banquet is meant to gather mages across the Continent in hopes that some semblance of agreement can be reached between them. If the brewing storm is to be circumvented, this is an absolute necessity,” Tissaia said seriously. 

She had been trying to not join the fray on either side, much preferring to remain neutral given all the circumstances. No one was going to come out on either side unscathed and until they saw that, concessions were imperative. Each had points that made sense, each point of view not strictly perfect in vision. Perhaps the banquet and meeting the following morn would prove beneficial in staunching tensions that seemed bent to tip over at any point.

“The Brotherhood is on its last leg anyway. I’ll not say that what Phillipa and Kiera are proposing is any better, but at least they understand that the power of men knows no bounds,” Yennefer shrugged.

“And the passionate ideas of a woman would have better outcomes? Gender has nothing to do with right and wrong. Sound reasoning is all that will see us through this unfortunate disagreement.”

“This _disagreement_ is likely to send us into war. Nilfgaard will not go quietly. They’ve amassed a lot of supporters across the lands. Who is to say that some of our own might not be in the rumblings?” Yennefer frowned. Her sense of distrust had always proved that no one got close to her in any regard. Except…

“All will come to a head tomorrow. Let’s worry about the night,” Tissaia had sighed, walking over to her table and selecting her earrings for the night. “Phillipa is to bring Dijkstra as her companion for the night. I’ve heard that Geralt shall be on your arm this evening.”

“And who should arrive on the elbow of Tissaia de Vries? Perhaps Vilgefortz has managed to worm his way into your inner circle after all of these years,” Yennefer tried to rile.

She had stilled at this. While talented and strong, Vilgefortz had an air about him that Tissaia did not trust completely. He had shown his worth many times, but there was a quiet darkness she had sensed in him long ago, close on the heels of the events at Sodden. For that reason, she had never fully embraced him, emotionally as a friend nor between her legs as a lover. No, it was better to be alone.

“I’ll attend the evening’s festivities alone,” Tissaia sighed with a hum. 

“If I had known, I could have accompanied you. I just thought that there was something…”

“There’s not. And there never has been,” Tissaia snapped. Calming herself, she had turned to Yennefer. “I appreciate the sentiment, I do. But Geralt has agreed to be with you this evening and I am sure that will prove more fruitful than having to keep your old teacher company.”

Yennefer’s jaw dropped. “Did you just make a scandalous comment about my sex life?”

“Well, I suppose it is good that _someone_ is having one. Not all of us can be saints,” Tissaia waved offhandedly.

Yennefer rose from her draping across the chair and made her way over to her selection for the evening. In black, her signature color, the soft silk sat beneath a flowing fabric atop that almost gave it an iridescence. She would be the talk of the banquet, no doubt. Long legs, small waist, ample bosom.

Tissaia wondered if the witcher had any idea how lucky he was. Knowing what she did of him, she could hazard a guess toward no. For the most part, he was even keel and hardly ever got flustered. Yennefer had a way with people though, sending currents through the previously unflappability of many. The idea struck a little too close to home. 

“So,” Tissaia worked to clear her throat, hoping her next words weren’t seen for what they were. “Geralt is an interesting choice. Have the two of you been spending a lot of time together?”

Yennefer narrowed her eyes and a slight upturn tugged at the corner of her lips. “He’s good in a pinch. 

“Do I want to try and sort through that comment?”

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s good in a lot of ways but I’m merely referring to him as an option for muscle should this rather ill-timed banquet get out of hand,” Yennefer rolled her eyes. 

“Still fatalistic, I see,” Tissaia murmured and put a twisted bracelet on her wrist. 

Suddenly, Yennefer was behind her. Her hands were on Tissaia’s shoulders and her look was one of seriousness. Their eyes met in the reflection and Yennefer held her there. “Don’t downplay this. That entire room will be filled with mages and I don’t trust nary a one of them as far as I could telekinetic blast them. You can’t fit that many egos in a room and not have something happen.”

She’d walked away then, a gentle touch on Tissaia’s hip. A warning. 

Picking up her dress, she’d looked one last time into her blue eyes before leaving the room. The festivities would be starting any minute and they were both due to appear, Yennefer breathtakingly stunning on the Witcher’s arms and Tissaia entering with an empty arm and too many feelings. 

//

To say that things were tense were an understatement. It was palpable on their air even though every face held plastered on smiles and every mouth cordial words. 

Tissaia was far from dense. She knew where loyalties lay. For the most part, the girls had remained true to the North. Sabrina, Triss, Kiera, and Phillipa had taken up the cause against Nilfgaard. The two formers had a heavy grievance against them and Tissaia knew that after Sodden, after the many other battles, they would never fall to their knees under a sun insignia. 

Vilgefortz had always been a snake in the grass but differing opinions were not cause to move against him. Still, she agreed with Yennefer’s assessment: neither he nor his assistant Lydia could be trusted. Francesca was also another player and mixed with the other two, the combination could prove tumultuous. 

The truth of the matter was that no one was going to win. 

Watchful of the bodies milling to and fro, Tissaia had taken up a perch against the wall. A goblet had found its way into her fingers but she had done little drinking it, taking small sips every now and again when curious eyes would wander her direction, no doubt wondering why the great Arch Mistress of Aretuza had taken to the side of the party. 

The truth was, it afforded her a look around the room, to hear the floating words of politics being discussed all around. It made her heart ache that it had come to this, that they had fallen so far. As part of the Chapter, she had seen her fair share of squabbles. This, however, was a tipping point. The conclave meeting would be a deciding factor in the shape of the world. 

To escape her troublesome thoughts, she had also taken to watching Yennefer. The woman was inescapable whenever they both occupied the same room. Tissaia felt her eyes drawn to her like a magnet. 

She was all black flowing fabric, beautiful skin. Even Geralt had managed to look dapper beside her. Loathe as she was to admit it, they did make a striking pair. 

What did she and Yennefer look like as they stood together? Were they just as intriguing side by side? Did people look to them and feel the undercurrent simmering? Did they wonder if they felt familial attachments or if they were lovers behind closed doors? 

The last struck her between her legs and she startled when Yennefer leaned against the wall beside her soon after. Idly, she hoped that she had closed off her mind, that Yennefer hadn’t heard the question on a floating thought out from within her head. 

“Holding up the wall doesn’t seem like the role an arch-mistress should be filling at a banquet such as this,” Yennefer commented. All waves and soft skin…

“I think your earlier assessment of tonight was correct,” Tissaia admitted. “To say that moods are charged is an understatement.” She looked at Yennefer and scanned the room. “Where has your witcher gotten off to?”

“You know men, always trying to best one another. He’s wading through tankard after tankard of ale against some of the younger mages from Ban Ard who’ve apparently never interacted with the White Wolf.”

“Mmm,” Tissaia hummed. Legend preceded him, so it was easy to see why the younger males would be eager to see his prowess.

“Besides,” Yennefer leaned away from the wall and held out her hand. “I owe my favorite teacher a dance.”

Tissaia had gotten stuck on the words. She didn’t know whether to be grateful for them after their long and complicated history or secretly wounded by them, desperate for something more. Even just a sliver.

“Custom does not dictate the dancing of two women together,” Tissaia whispered. “Only women and men.”

“Do I look as if I care about tradition or expectation? Rules are hardly a hindrance to the way I operate. Come. I’d like to have you in my arms for a moment of making you follow my lead for once,” Yennefer wiggled her fingers. 

“And who is to say you would be the one leading?” Tissaia raised an eyebrow. 

Reaching for her hand then, Yennefer grabbed it and pulled her in by her hips. A small gasp escaped, rogue, and Yennefer’s eyes danced with delight. She stood perhaps a little too long, her thumb rubbing a circular pattern on the emerald material of Tissaia’s dress. 

It was hard to push the moment away, to think of it as anything less than what Tissaia’s body wanted it to be. As Yennefer held her close, was she thinking of it too? Those brief and fleeting seconds that seemed to go far too quickly as they spun around the room, where they had been pressed against one another in what felt like everywhere. Wrist to wrist, hand in hand, hip and hand, hand and waist. It had only been one dance but it had been enough to provide Tissaia with a lifetime of longing.

The song had ended but neither had let go, eyes holding one another. The unspeakable thing always hanging between them was rearing its head. Tissaia had just felt bold enough to tighten her grip a bit on Yennefer’s waist, a measure to keep her close and near. 

And that’s precisely when it had all gone to shit. Geralt had materialized and cooled the escalating warmth rising in Tissaia’s body. He’d nodded solemnly, scanned the room again, and held out a hand to Yennefer. 

“I’d like you close by tonight,” he grunted without much inflection in his voice. Yellow met purple and Tissaia could tell that even though they were there together, there was still a lot of push and pull between them. 

Yennefer had quickly linked up her mind to Tissaia’s, bid her a quick _sorry,_ and _stay close to me too_ before letting Geralt lead her away. There had been no smooth way to exit the dance floor, to not act as if she hadn’t been abandoned. Ducking her head, she’d gone back to her earlier perch and spent the night there. 

Occasionally, she would look up to catch Yennefer’s watchful gaze. In a room full of people and despite a witcher being at her side, she’d still held on to Tissaia as if she’d attached a rope to the woman’s glimmering green gown. 

Yennefer’s eyes hadn’t caused the kernel of disquiet in Tissaia but had certainly made it grow as time passed. Never one to overly indulge the sorceresses’ grandiose ideas, Tissaia had also come to approach them with a certain level of caution too. 

While Yennefer often appeared wild and brash, she had gained some merit over the years as a mage well known for her lack of mincing words. If she saw something askew, she commented.

 _But the world cannot be falling apart_ , Tissaia told herself. Even though she could practically taste the chaos of every mage in the room, the signatures of it bitter on the tongue. 

It’s the one time she should have listened to her gut instead of her heart and mind. To Yennefer’s warning. 

Once the moon was high, the banquet ended. She’d gone back to her room like she’d entered the night. Slept her last decent sleep before the end of everything. For the cogs were already working on overdrive. 

//

If Tissaia had thought the banquet ended in shit, when day broke, hell rained down with a fiery assault. 

She regrets absolutely everything. 

//

They’d all been shackled in dimeritium and Tissaia had to fight her own body not to convulse involuntarily at the mere thought of the cursed metal being wrapped around their wrists. 

She’d felt its effects only briefly and in every painful second, it felt as if death would be a kinder punishment. It had been akin to having one's chaos incinerated, to have it turn to vapor and escape into the ether. 

Phillipa stood smugly and expounded on the sheer betrayal caused by the four glaring sets of eyes that peered up from their perch from their knees on the floor. Their eyes almost looked as black as the Nilfgaardian crest, a stark contrast to Dijkstra’s men and their Rendaian red. 

_The lot of them, idiots_ , Tissaia thought. 

Not one single soul was innocent and yet the amount of self-righteousness swirling in the room could likely have powered Aretuza for centuries, giving the writhing eels a much needed reprieve. 

“I hate to put an end to this so-called do-good measure, but you approach the issues from your high horse and expect nothing to befall you because you are in the just.” She leveled her words at Philippa. 

“They’re traitors, Tissaia. Our way of life, our very livelihood is at stake. Did you not see the atrocities those in bed with Nilfgaard are capable of firsthand at Sodden? If not for some amusing theatrics…” Phillipa edged her voice to a bladelike precision, no doubt meaning to gut Tissaia for her propensity to protect a certain amethyst eyed mage. “...then your name would likely be standing for all eternity on that ridge with the thirteen.”

“You’re all on the brink of war and looking to point a finger so that blame can be aligned later on. When there are not just homes destroyed and lands scorched, but the very soil you tread upon stained red with blood. No one wins what you’re both planning and you know it,” Tissaia warned lowly.

Unlike Yennefer, Tissaia had never been able to reason much with Phillipa. She knew the second she said her words, they would fall on deaf ears. Phillipa may have been lacking sight and her hearing might have been sharp as straight blades, but the woman would not be swayed by likely anyone, Tissaia included.

All for the ideals of a few kings and a bunch of hot-headed individuals. 

“You’re standing at the brink too, dear Arch-Mistress, and yet you fail to acknowledge what’s happening right in front of your face. Nilfgaard will be ruling the halls by nightfall,” Phillipa bit off tersely. 

“And your proof of it? If you’re so sure, let’s see to it that the truth is still pure and that bias doesn’t bend every word that falls out of your mouth.” 

It was a challenge, one Tissaia wasn’t entirely sure would provide the results to de-escalate the situation. But until she could come up with a better solution, it would have to be the attempt to momentarily turn the tension down from boiling over to a slight simmer. 

“What do you propose?” 

It became the second mistake she made. (the first being dismissing Yennefer’s words in her chamber the previous night)

Her tongue felt thick when she spoke but she tried to project an air of confidence, her tone as authoritarian as ever. 

“Have Yennefer bring in the cub,” she found herself saying. 

As if the child had a home to be tied to anymore. As if she’d not grown into someone capable of working with her immeasurable gifts. As if Yennefer hadn’t gained some sort of the life she had always wanted, a young person sticking to her side as she imparted words of wisdom.

No, Ciri was a woman now in the eyes of the world, a witcher one at that, and needed to be treated as such even though Tissaia was risking a lot of people’s necks by even suggesting the ashen haired girl be pranced before a chasm of close to warring mages. Too close to warring kingdoms. 

Tissaia knew if she did this, allowed it to happen, there would be no more training for Ciri. She would never become versed in the Gift and the Art. Tissaia would never teach her how to quell her chaos completely. 

_Like we had planned, Yennefer_. The thought crackled with static and died. If there was to be an Aretuza at all, she must be brought in to be the intermediary in a conflict she was not directly involved in. 

Tissaia could tell the room was holding their breaths. She grounded out her words again. “Have Yennefer bring her in. We shall divine the truth once and for all.”

//

The truth did not eke out on bird’s wings but instead, billowed forth like smoke. It erupted with taloned claws and pierced eardrums and hearts with a kind of agony. 

“Lies!” Phillipa all but screeched. Akin to the aviary characteristics she morphed into time and time again. 

Tissaia looked at Ciri’s dilated eyes, the slackened look across her face. So far deep inside of her trance, she had no idea of the waking world. 

“The girl has spoken,” Tissaia whispered and committed her third mistake: she spoke Elder and dropped the spell holding everyone else in a magical prison. 

The bands fell from the mages' wrists onto the ground with a loud clatter, the metal sizzling as it melted into molten pitch puddles on the stone floor. 

There was but a breath before the chaos living inside of their bodies was flung outward and the onslaught began. 

Already, there were two crumpled heaps on the floor, bodies taking in air scant seconds ago, now left to cool as death gripped them and never let go. It happened so fast, Tissaia barely had time to process, to even mutter a spell in defense, before something else occurred. 

The din was loud but all she could manage to internalize was the downright deafening roar of blood in her ears and then rising bile in her throat. 

Geralt’s blood seeped out at an unyielding pace and she could see the catlike yellow of his eyes struggling to hang on. There had been little time to think, so she acted. 

Conjuring a portal, she shoved him and his ward through, Yennefer’s purple eyes close behind and sending out a silent question to Tissaia before snapping the swirling vortex to a close.

With another swirl of chaos, she created one for Triss and shoved her through, not even bothering to look at her as she did. 

Francesca took a group under her leadership and Tissaia could see Vilgefortz off to the side battling against anybody that came too near his form. He’d already ripped into the witcher so if there was any chance to stop what was happening, he was the only hope of appeal. 

Sending out a stun spell, she worked her way toward him as he toppled a bit off guard. Before he could gather his wits, she locked her fingers around his jerkin and shoved him roughly into the wall. 

“Stop this madness!” Tissaia practically yelled. 

That’s all she got to say before a sinister sneer broke across his face like an angry tidal wave, twisting his features from handsome to gruesome. She’s sure he’d have spit too if she were anyone else. Still, he had laughed in her face. 

“Words I fling back to you. You could have stopped this all and yet here we are, great Rectoress,” he cackled. His teeth had blood smeared across them as he had grinned.

She had been so taken aback by the bite in his voice that she didn't notice his strong fists clenching around the fabric of her dress, almost lifting her off the ground in a grip of his own. A trickle of sweat crept slowly down from his temple. 

“The blood shed today and every day hereafter?” Vilgefortz dropped his voice low. “It’s on your hands.”

The last part was spoken like punctuation placed between each word. Like plunging a dagger into someone, withdrawing it again, and penetrating harder with each motion, each sound. 

This lead to her fourth mistake, because that seemed to be all she was capable of doing anymore—cataclysmically misstepping to the point of utter disaster. Because people were dead. Because the crack was now a full-blown fracture. Because the world that she had known for the last century was all but dust inside of her chest now, a soon to be bitter and twisting memory. 

So she ran. She ran as fast as she could carry herself away from the fray like a downright coward. Tears made the journey difficult, the staggering ache in her heart even worse to contend with as she’d gained distance on the scene. 

Her girls, her beautiful and wondrous girls. Sabrina. Triss. The newer faces of Kiera and Phillipa. Somewhere hopefully safe now, Yennefer and Ciri.

There was nothing left within the walls of Aretuza anymore except the crumbled pillars of a once great school, upheld by talent and pride. One that she’d single-handedly brought to its knees through her own arrogant pride and uncompromising stance. 

She entered her bed chambers for what she knew would be the last time. Her hands shook atop the wood and she knew what waited below, what was inches from her fingers inside of the drawer. 

Moving out of sheer muscle memory, Tissaia opened it, saw the bone handle of the short knife. 

There was not a sound around, save for her own ragged breathing, and it was a stark contrast to the loud from before. Almost like if one could close their eyes, they would forget that death and destruction had just occurred moments ago. 

Tissaia let the quiet lull her, calm her. Steel her resolve. Her fingers no longer shook when she gripped the knife in them, her body coming to sit in the chair beside the desk. 

Her walls to the room were red, the color of dying sun, the color of blood. It filtered in from the large windows overlooking the jagged cliffs down below, the saltwater churning down below too. 

There would be no unevenness when she did what was coming next. What was about to happen would not be a mistake. The candle nearby hissed out, dimming the room even more. Reaching out, she straightened the quill lying across the now meaningless letter. One last chance at order. 

Next, she straightened the knife. Her veins pulsed below her wrist as she flexed involuntarily. Just as she was about to sign the salutation to her life story, the knife hovering then digging into her wrist to test, a single droplet of blood oozing out, the blade was halted by words. 

“You’re not taking control. You’re losing it.” 

The _words_ an echo, the inflection careful but warning too. At them, the knife clattered loudly to the ground and a sob erupted from her throat, a strangling thing she was not sure she’d ever emitted her entire life. 

It didn’t matter. As she fell apart, Yennefer enveloped her like vine. Held her together as best she could. The woman had given her what Tissaia had denied her when she was just but a young thing. 

It had been more than she had ever earned. 


	3. The Shift out of Oblivion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The coup at Thanedd has happened, Tissaia is in self exile, and Yennefer brings her company and a lot of bit more

Both yesterday and forever ago. Tissaia can still remember every emotion. Every word and action and thought are still bad dreams that don’t just visit during the waning hours of night. 

When her eyes are open, she relives them every second of every minute. It makes her heart twist beyond recognition most days. The only balm that ever seems to soothe is when she gets to internalize the smell of those lilacs from the forest with the added bonus of imagining Yennefer’s skin somewhere down below it. 

Skin she’s barely touched, never tasted. Never reveled in the desire to much in the past because of its imminent danger. But now, Tissaia only lives life in pieces of Yennefer and the propensity grows out of shame, is borne from loneliness, expands because she is likely to never see another person again as long as she lives. 

She’d been standing on the edge of life and Yennefer pulled her back with her arms and words, conjured a cottage in the thickest parts of the Kaedwinian forests. Told her to live instead of die and hope that was enough to keep her from trying something incredibly dark again. 

“If you insist I live, I insist it be away from the world,” Tissaia’s shame had burned. She had choked on the words through her tears. To once have been so strong and now be reduced to a flicker of the woman who ran Aretuza.

“I know of a place that only the creatures and foliage will know of your living,” Yennefer had rested her cheek against the side of the once primly kept brown hair. “And me.”

Inside of guilt, inside of pain and anger and longing, inside of a world that resembles a snow globe most of the time, Tissaia now passes days and waits for when Yennefer might return. 

She cannot begin to control the skipping of her heart when she eventually hears the woman’s boots scuff at the planks outside. So used to feeling like moving through a fog, Yennefer appears and parts the proverbial haze. 

While she dares not smile when Yennefer arrives, she knows the woman detects the gravity of her visit. Yennefer has been reading Tissaia like a book for years. 

“I wish I could say exile looks well on you but…” Yennefer tarries off her sentence. Looks sheepish. Bites an apple loudly instead of finishing.

“Does it look better than me being dead?” Tissaia snaps. “Because that is the look I was going for.”

“Instead of wallowing in self pity, why not think of a lovely and creative way to reward me for my chivalry?” Yennefer’s eyebrows shoot up. Her boots drip slushy mud on the table. Tissaia sighs and closes her eyes. 

“I cannot do this anymore,” she motions between them. “Banter as if either of us are the people we used to be.”

“You are no more Thanedd than I am Rinde or Aedirn or Sodden or any other fucked up event I’ve been a part of. We are our failures, yes, but we are our triumphs too. What happened to the woman who could make the wind straighten out? To the woman who could do the same to spines.”

“She died that day!” Tissaia slams her fist on the table so harshly, she hears it splinter somewhere inside. Like her heart does _again_ when she sees Yennefer’s responding look. She whispers. “I may not have ended literally that day, but I did figuratively. I am but a ghost, Yennefer. A banshee woman who lives in the forest and wails on end.”

She feels cleaved into despite Yennefer’s attempt to keep her stitched and functioning. 

“The Lodge…” Yennefer clears her throat. “Phillipa, Triss, Sabrina, Margarita. Some of the most powerful women on the Continent. They could benefit from you.”

“Oh, yes,” Tissaia bites out with a sneer. “I’m sure they would welcome me with open arms considering I put the final nail into the coffin of the Brotherhood.”

“One long needed, I say,” Yennefer shrugs. “Hell, they might even greet you with feast and drink considering they had long wanted that anyway.”

Tissaia tenses as Yennefer stands and places a soft touch to her shoulder, boldly runs it up the gritted jut of her chin and jaw. The pad of her thumb brushes the tautness away. 

Tissaia is a bloody fool, leaning into Yennefer’s soft fingers, but she does. There’s a responding satisfied hum to accompany the pressure Tissaia has created. She feels her chin lifted and is staring into Yennefer’s eyes. 

“You were foolish, Tissaia,” Yennefer supplies. 

“For that, I pay dearly every day.”

“But the Brotherhood was corrupt and you were barely holding them together anyway. If not you, not a gale but a gust would have knocked them apart eventually.” The way that Yennefer speaks the words almost makes Tissaia feel consoled. 

The fact that Yennefer is even trying is a testament to how far they’ve come since their first fraught meetings over a century ago. Oh, how the tides have mercifully changed. Tissaia is not sure she could begin to bear this self induced ostracism if not for the woman who Tissaia would never have compared to a beacon of light or a steady constant ever before. 

Tissaia traces the stitching of Yennefer’s vest with her finger, the motion so out of character from who she used to be. She wonders if she’s not running her hands over something that belongs to someone else. 

Suddenly, the sheer amount of want her body feels seems disparate to anything she’s allowed herself in the past. That’s Yennefer underneath her hands, not at all stopping the turning of the touch into a kind of grope that Tissaia is escalating it into. 

To claw at something familiar. To take that back because it’s good and try to grow it in the broken space instead of letting guilt stay invasive. To try to be alive when she never feels much of anything except dead. 

“I think I would cease to exist at all if not for you,” Tissaia murmurs and then loses herself in the physicality and essence of the single most important person in her life. The _only_ person left in her life. 

A lump forms in her throat, one that seems to almost live there. But this one is for different reasons because she and Yennefer are breathing in the same rhythm, both letting air escape their mouths in sporadic puffs. 

Every bit of Tissaia’s skin feels like it’s on fire as she levels her gaze at Yennefer’s chin, her plump bottom lip that looks like it needs to be tasted. 

_Where is this coming from?_ she wonders as she dances her fingers over that lip she was looking at. _Why am I doing this?_

And then she leans forward to turn pondering into knowing. Once again, midway through, she’s stopped. There’s a hand to her throat, a barely there touch and her own lips know the desolation the rest of her body feels, the act of never having. 

“What are you doing, Tissaia?” Yennefer says it like it’s pure anguish to speak. Tissaia hopes it’s from stopping herself from having instead of not wanting at all.

“I need you, Yennefer,” Tissaia pants out, presses closer in order just to _feel_. Yennefer grips her hip hard and stills her. 

“Don’t speak to me of need when it is disguised as such. When it is really something else,” Yennefer’s face darkens a bit. 

Tissaia is so lost as to what should actually happen next. She works to gain purchase on some solid idea that doesn’t feel like she’s in free fall. No part of her feels like she wants to be any bit of her old self though, the one that would never even _dream_ of uttering these things to Yennefer’s face. 

She shakes her head. “If you worry I don’t know how to please a woman, I assure you I do.” She’s no longer in her body, looking on from outside of it. This is the only explanation as she pulls at the straps and buckles of the belt strapped across Yennefer’s cinched waist. “There have been a few in my many years alive.” Maybe this makes her smile. A small part of old confidence coming back for a brief second.

“Listen to yourself, Tissaia!” Yennefer hisses, grabbing her hands roughly. “You’ve always held so tightly to your control and now it’s as if you’ve said “fuck it all” and are bent to have not even a sliver of it.”

“Every single day, I float through the hours of it,” Tissaia retorts back. “Heavens forbid that I want to actually remember what it feels like to be fucking human!”

Her hand goes immediately to her mouth. While words like what she’s said aren’t exactly foreign, they don’t come around much at all. She crumples a bit, shoulders sagging. She’d cry if she had anything left to give, if the odd sensation of desire could wither like she does amongst the trees here. 

“Damn you, woman,” Yennefer says seriously but then she steps purposely forward, resting a hand commandingly to hip. “We will not speak of this again.” 

She spins Tissaia and starts unlacing her dress. The words are lava in the tubes of her ears. “I care for you, more than languages can ever encompass. But this is me giving you what you have asked for. Nothing more.”

 _Not love._ Tissaia’s dress is peeled and she wants to say _I don’t even care, just take me away for a while_ , but then Yennefer ceases to move. The cool air hits Tissaia’s bare back and she presses a hand to the edges of the fabric to keep it from falling down. 

“In another world, you’d have never asked this of me,” Yennefer says quietly. That’s when Tissaia feels a singular finger running down the vertebrae of her spine.

“That world is gone. So am I. Rather, any part of me that had it in me to refrain,” Tissaia reminds again then admits, shivers against the trekking finger as it dips to the lowest point between bare back and fabric hidden lower body. 

Tissaia has thought lying in wait hidden from the earth has been excruciating. Waiting for Yennefer’s hands to come to a decision eclipses that completely. She puts a hand against the wall to hold herself up. Waits for something that may never come again. 


	4. A Routine of Sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can it be classified as a mistake if you keep doing it over and over again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Myn lykyng"roughly translates to the 'one I delight in, the one who gives me pleasure'. Likewise "myne owne hertis rote" literally translates to 'my own heart's root.' Yay for Middle English and the 1200s.

Warmth, beautiful and comforting and all-encompassing— everywhere, everywhere. 

Maybe halting death was worth _this_.

Tissaia sings a song with her climax cry. When another cry manifests itself after, she knows they’ll never speak of it. 

There’s only one thing worse than feeling nothing and that’s feeling _everything_. As she watches the fire crackle in the hearth and bites at the edge of her thumb, she suspects that neither of them is in a hurry to do the latter at all. 

She wipes the tears on the linen sheet covering her naked body. It’s almost like the tiny drops of condensation were never there at all. Like maybe they were never real. That maybe the strong firmness pressed against her back right now isn’t either. 

That maybe this is all just a wonderful, yet brief dream. 

//

Yennefer crosses her arms and looks at Tissaia warily as she scuffs a knee-high boot on the wooden floor of the cottage’s porch. She purses her lips after she opens her mouth a few times to speak, nothing coming forth. 

“I shouldn’t have,” she murmurs and casts her eyes over to where Tissaia stands. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth.

Not we, _I_. Tissaia nods knowingly and crosses her arms too, a standoff of uncertainty emerging. Tissaia backs her shoulders and stands a little taller. 

“Are you embarrassed because you’ve slept with a ruined woman?” she tries to level the tremor running through her voice. For a second, she thinks she might resemble the person she used to be. 

Yennefer looks off into the distance, not answering immediately. There are a doe and a fawn leisurely nipping at the stalky shoots of grass that poke up around the area. A mother and a daughter. 

Tissaia wonders if that’s where Yennefer’s brain is landing. Hopes that the very wrong assessment of their situation never even enters her mind, has never been there at all. It’s never been a part of Tissaia’s consciousness, even when the now woman first came to Aretuza all of those years ago. Now that she knows her intimately, that fact is only further proven-she’s never thought of Yennefer as a daughter. Her heart has always twisted it to something else, something more. 

“No one is intact anymore.” Yennefer is still looking off.

She chances a step forward, touches Yennefer’s elbow. “Yen, please.” She has no idea what she’s asking for.

It’s only after she’s spoken that she realizes what she’s done. The name she’s used. This isn’t the dynamic they have and she’s infringing on a troubling memory if the look on Yennefer’s face is indicative of it. She cannot be this person to the both of them, Tissaia and Geralt.

“I said we wouldn’t talk about this,” Yennefer waves off with a grumble. Tissaia doesn’t have to be a sorceress to know what’s coming next. “But Tissaia...it cannot happen again.”

“Because of the yellow eyes in the wood?” is Tissaia’s sarcastic response. She’s already invited his presence here so she might as well address it. 

“You’re lucky I…” Yennefer’s chaos thrums like tightened lute strings as she puffs up a little, fist clenched and jaw fixed in rigidity. Her anger vibrates off of her in waves. 

Tissaia never hears the end of the sentence. Instead, she has little time to brace herself before Yennefer careens forward, capturing her lips for but a breath in a firm kiss, and then leaves her teetering as she feels that chaos disappear. 

All around, the eerie quiet of the forest envelopes. Eventually, it staunches the wild beat of Tissaia’s heart. It reminds her of who she is. Of the life she is living. The one she gets to go at alone.

//

Days turn into ones with Yennefer and without her. That’s all they are anymore. 

//

As it turns out, it isn’t the only time it happens. However, It isn’t a routine either. It’s sporadic, unpredictable. Just like the person who initiates it most of the time. And while the first time had been completely silent, save for the end, there is some sort of unspoken agreement that if anything is said, it will come from Yennefer’s lips or not at all. 

Which is fine by Tissaia all the same. She doesn’t have much to talk about anyway. Not when Yennefer says things like “I guess I’m not me anymore either” when she takes her from behind and “only once more” as she sears kisses into her skin or “this is seriously the last time” from between her thighs. 

There is an equal flicker of thrill when Tissaia can pry something from her unbidden too. When she shows Yennefer that she meant what she’d said about knowing a woman’s body and not just her own. 

“Why must you be so good at this?” is the query she gets when she’s got Yennefer’s long locks wrapped around one of her hands like a glove and the other palming her body. 

Tissaia offers a shrug, but it is eclipsed by her motions. Being told of one’s skill or prowess after they’ve long given up on themselves has a way of ringing hollow. It hits much the same inside of the ex-rectoress, even if what’s happening would have once been enough to break a smile upon Tissaia’s lips forever.

“I refuse to become addicted to this,” is the grumble another time, soon followed by a discordant moan that makes a devilish sense of pride contort the corner of Tissaia’s lips finally. 

Perhaps her favorite though arrives when they’re both spent and pressing their foreheads together, beads of sweat dripping down bare bodies that work to recover together. “You have completely ruined me,” Yennefer whispers. 

_Good_ , Tissaia thinks. She’s past feeling anything other than numb, guilt so far removed to be cursory. She knows it’s wrong, but she’s glad that finally, something is just as completely fucked (up) as she is. 

//

The knife she’d clutched in her hand had been given to her on her age of reason birthday. The last one she celebrated now hundreds of years ago. 

She used to be a bird with clipped wings. Born poor like every other soul who seemed to find their way into Aretuza before it could be bought. But that birthday, her father had crafted a small paring knife out of an antler cut from a dead buck. He’d fit the blade into a carved out space and handed it to her without any pomp. 

Tissaia had eyed it then, unsure of why she was holding it at all. She’s sure her eyes had reflected this because her father had sniffed and pointed. 

“To help protect you from the world,” he’d said. 

Little did she know that some three hundred years later, she would turn that little blade against herself. 

_Until maddening Yennefer of Vengerberg spoke and made me pull it away._

Tissaia sighs heavily, stares at the ceiling of the cottage and listens to the crackle of the fire nearby. On the other side of her, Yennefer snores as if dreams can never be haunted. 

As if they don’t keep making the same mistake over and over again. Tissaia knows that if this continues, her heart is likely to suffer beyond repair. 

Her mind wanders instead to that last birthday, to the dawn of the one now passing away. She does not aim to tell Yennefer about it at all, thankful she’s asleep so she cannot pry at her mind. 

A nudge tells her otherwise. “You will regret not telling me that this is the day that you entered the world,” Yennefer’s muffled voice comes from the other side. 

With a turn of her head, a turn of her hips, she makes Yennefer regret ever poking without consent. Not long after, she’s feeling her own type of lamentation at never wanting whatever _this_ is to end. 

//

She never leaves Tissaia alone to wake up at dawn but is gone by it most of the time still. The woman makes a habit out of letting Tissaia watch her prepare to go away as she retrieves her clothes from their always inevitable scatter and places them back on her body. 

A dress here, a belt there, a boot over there. Tunic, jerkin, trousers, whatever. It’s all been on Tissaia’s floor, along with Yennefer’s naked skin. 

They’ve taken to small nods or little acknowledgment at all when Yennefer goes to part ways. Mostly because saying goodbye, even non verbally, is getting very hard to do. At least on Tissaia’s part. 

Yennefer doesn’t remind Tissaia any more of the transgression they keep making. They’re long past the recitation of it. She also doesn’t ever kiss her at the end of their trysts either. Not since the first time. 

Tissaia watches with observant eyes, Yennefer’s pace methodical as she puts herself back together. She spins on a boot and shrugs, a heavy sigh billowing out and puffing up strands of hair. She still looks incredibly young, especially when like this, and Tissaia can feel nothing but sadly old. 

When she crawls back onto the bed on her knees, it startles Tissaia out of what she has expected to come next. She swoops and straddles Tissaia’s hips, pushing her back into the bed again, and kisses her with a languid slowness as if she’s not going anywhere particularly fast. 

Tissaia is very, very confused but cannot find it in herself to question the deviation from how they usually split apart. Yennefer finally breaks away and growls into Tissaia’s neck. 

“I’m too old for this, you know.”

She doesn’t even want to surmise what _this_ is anymore. It makes her beyond tired and thoroughly heartbroken.

“Some of us are eclipsing three hundred years,” Tissaia feels every single one of them on every blasted day now. Except when Yennefer appears and wipes it all away with a freezing of time and space. 

Suddenly, the woman’s face goes pensive. Her lips part and she looks fettered. Tissaia doesn’t like the look passing across her face. 

“What is it, Yennefer?” she reaches up with her hand against her cheek and asks. 

She shakes her head. “I wish I could hate you with all my heart,” Yennefer cryptically tells her after a sudden intake of breath, her hand trailing to press against Tissaia’s, and then she is gone just as fast as that first time, leaving Tissaia’s floundering for any type of purchase.

She has no idea what just happened. Sadly, there is no telling when gale-force Yennefer will be back.

//

They do not prepare sorceresses for what chaos unused in one’s body feels like. How it feels like licking flames on the barriers to the outside of her body. How it’s like being swallowed whole and being too full all of the time.

They don’t speak of how chaos dying inside feels like being ripped apart backward. How even lifting a rock and making a flower wilt would feel like opening a dam and gaining some ease for a little while.

It hurts. It’s the greatest pain that she’s ever felt in all of her life. For every second she has to endure, to staunch and tamp down, it becomes worth it when Yennefer arrives. She floats in and somehow manages to displace the agony for as long as she’s near. 

Tissaia might be romanticizing Yennefer’s presence in her life but she’s finally alright with that. The woman has become a balm that allows Tissaia to breathe for a little while. Until she becomes consumed again. 

It’s a cycle really. Being eaten alive by chaos. Being devoured by the likes of feeling connected to Yennefer. A life of tiny deaths, over and over again. 

//

She’s lived a long time so Tissaia is under no false pretenses about precisely how long this thing between her and Yennefer will last, especially after the confusing end to their last time together. Granted, she is forever grateful to not be wasting away without a single soul knowing she exists, save for the woman’s skin she can close her eyes and practically taste now.

It’s incredibly stupid, to have started this thing with Yennefer where they clash together. But she had resigned herself to never feeling anything ever again and now she’s experiencing what feels like a second wind.

Removed from the world, there’s little to do until Yennefer returns. Always has been. Lately, however, Tissaia has taken to gathering herbs and flowers in the forest since the winter snows have finally melted. Alchemy was never exactly her strong suit, but an outlet is needed for the stockpile of chaos that begs to be let out and cannot.

She cannot risk anyone other than Yennefer knowing precisely where she is. Not Triss, not Sabrina. Not one singular ghost from her past. The exception being only Yennefer. No one else. 

Yennefer eventually teleports in one day, her chaos cracking like static in the air. Tissaia remains quiet while she paces and flails, making wild gesticulations without really saying anything at all.

“Ciri...and Phillipa, gods! I’m just so…”

Tissaia hasn’t seen Yennefer like this in decades. Not since she raized an entire army at Sodden. Not even when the mutiny had been in motion at Thanedd. Tissaia blanches at the memory and waits. Then she remembers the bit of news that had somehow managed to float to her even in her perch in the forest. 

“I’d heard you died,” Tissaia whispers. The things that manage to make their ways through the branches and stick like briars in her heart are troublesome. “In Skellige.”

Yennefer starts at her words, fixes Tissaia with a stormy look. “I will never join that pitiful excuse for a group,” she spits out. “Triss and Sabrina are as good as lost to me anyway.”

“Aren’t we all?” Tissaia sighs. 

“They will not have her!” Yennefer’s hand balls and she slams her fist against the wooden wall. The world shakes. “They did not take Ciri at Thanedd and they will not take her now. I’ll lay my life down for her without a second thought.”

“Your witcher would probably agree.”

“My witcher can go fuck himself,” Yennefer thunders, and then she’s sweeping Tissaia up in the most bruising kiss they’ve ever shared. 

Her hands are a fast flurry, uncoordinated, and pawing, and she’s ripping at whatever she can get her hands on. Tissaia doesn’t want to be taken like this, in a mad rush, but part of her (the part that never stops beating herself over and over again) feels as if she should let whatever’s happening just happen. 

“If not for Ciri, I might tuck myself away with you here for all eternity,” Yennefer presses her mouth on the exposed skin of Tissaia’s sloping shoulder. 

_You’d never,_ Tissaia wants to say because what she's telling her is such a stark contrast to the last ones she’d said before she disappeared for weeks. Because Yennefer does not know how to sit still in one place for long. 

But the repetition of the back and forth that’s developed lets the thought tickle Tissaia’s mind a bit. She might guiltily roll in it, even though she knows the girl with the almost white hair that had been on her knees at Thanedd and speaking at Tissaia’s behest from Yennefer means the world to the woman so near. Tissaia cannot rob the girl of a future with the only person resembling a mother she’s likely to have.

“Does Geralt aim to know you like I do?” Tissaia speaks over her shoulder, none of her previous ponderings working their way forth and Yennefer pulls her back into her, resting an arm tightly across her breast and mouth hot in her ear. 

She’s really in no position to stroke the crackle behind her, to poke at Yennefer’s insecurities, but she also wants Yennefer to understand that no one will know them quite like they do each other. Tissaia has years on the witcher. It would be blissfully indulgent to steal her from his bed permanently. 

“You are treading on thin ice,” Yennefer warns, but her fingers betray her speech as they drag up the flesh of Tissaia’s thighs to rest on them and the hinting curvature of bare bottom.

“I could cast spells quicker than you could even think of them, so don’t threaten me ever again,” Tissaia gasps out when touch lands. 

" _Myn lykyng_ , that’s something I would love to see,” Yennefer pants hotly against Tissaia and then the edges of the world blur, the moniker she’s used an aphrodisiac of epic proportions. 

She’d love to bite out how Yennefer’s used it, probably just in the heat of the moment, but it’s too damn good to tease her about using. Because Tissaia wants it to be a kind of life where she can be that to Yennefer wholly. 

_I’m so incredibly ridiculous_ , Tissaia thinks. Then she’s slamming her hand into the wall and falling apart. 

//

It will be much later before she finds out that Fringilla has struck again, this time not with powered dimeritium but with something infinitely more dangerous-feminine wiles. 

If Yennefer can scorch a field for Tissaia (it had been for her, hadn’t it?) then there is no telling what she will do now that Fringilla has seduced the yellow-eyed, pale-haired witcher. 

Tissaia tries not to think about it as she runs a hand along Yennefer’s naked back. She’s not sure what she would do either, if she had the luxury of having Yennefer all to herself. But Tissaia supposes Geralt has been sharing with her for a while. 

There is no triangle though. Potentially no edges at all. There is no telling how many souls lie entangled and quivering, how many branches exist within the people they give themselves to. 

“ _Myne owne hertis rote_ ,” Tissaia whispers, barely audible. Barely more than the movement of her lips. 

Tissaia curls up against Yennefer then. She is more like an arrow anyway, always sticking between her and Yennefer’s hearts. This is what she holds close, lodged, when Yennefer moves off to become someone else’s again.


	5. And Here We Are At the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some bit of happiness after many years of guilt

They’ve clashed together countless times now. It takes that many times, Tissaia guesses, for Yennefer to decide that maybe she wants to talk after all. 

“He’s been through them all, you know,” Yennefer twirls the cheese knife around. “Triss, Fringilla, gods, even Kiera.” 

“You’ve been with me.” Tissaia does not look at Yennefer when she says this. She’s afraid of what she’ll find. The small gash in the wooden table is suddenly very interesting. She runs her finger along it. 

“This may come as a shock to you,” Yennefer begins. Tissaia watches the twirl and wants to staunch it with a slap of her hand. She holds back. “But unlike the man who saw fit to attach himself to me through no want of my own, I have only sought you out to lend a hand between my thighs while he…” she growls “...he seemingly lets anything that moves do the same on his…”

“I quite know how it works,” Tissaia cuts Yennefer’s lewd description off. “Before you, I had been with a few men.”

“You cheeky thing. And here I was hoping you’d saved that sweetness at your apex for only me to drink in,” Yennefer says lasciviously and stabs the knife into the table, even though it’s for bloody cheese. 

“Don’t act as if you’ve not been with another woman before,” Tissaia rolls her eyes. 

The way her heart aches for that to be false is irrational. Yennefer is beautiful. There’s no way the experience of pairing with femininity belongs only to Tissaia. Yennefer stands and leans over the table, hovers to within inches of Tissaia’s face. She licks her lips, looks down. Raises her eyes and grabs at the fabric of her dress with a fist. 

“You are my absolute favorite of them,” she says and then is climbing on the table, knocking things off like a common house cat. 

Tissaia is startled by the behavior and absolutely shouldn’t be as Yennefer places a foot on the back of either side of the chair Tissaia is sitting in. Gripping the hem of her dress, she wraps her toes around the chair’s back to drag Tissaia forward until she’s got her face exactly where Yennefer wants her. 

She tilts her head and grins when Tissaia doesn’t move her face from its icy glare. “Don’t act as if I’m not your favorite out of all the girls in your life too.” 

Yennefer’s mouth blooms into a wide grin then. Her feet force Tissaia to lean her body forward. Now her dress is up to her thighs. A little more and the small world Tissaia loves will be available. Yennefer whispers and looks Tissaia square in the eyes. Raises an eyebrow. “That I have always been.”

Tissaia reaches out, grabs a hank of hair. “And don’t act as if you haven’t wanted that since the beginning.”

“This is why I keep coming back to you,” Yennefer quips. “Even though you are a little thundercloud, it gives me the greatest thrill to try and avoid getting struck by you.”

Tissaia wants to ask if she’s worried about what the effect of that would be, as if love might be the resulting electrical current that travels to her heart, a place where Tissaia might not be welcome. _A want and nothing more._

“Shut up, Yennefer,” Tissaia commands and flips the woman’s dress up to her hips. 

//

“I owe you a celebration,” Yennefer announces after. She brushes her wild nest of hair out of her face, chest rising and falling in a delicious rhythm. 

Tissaia scoots back and rises, wiping her mouth. “I’d say we just had one.” She moves off to the side and takes a glass of wine, taking a sip. 

“Not that,” Yennefer says, throwing her dress back down finally. “The days of one's birth are apparently a thing now, haven’t you heard? The new Christians are doing it every year right after the winter solstice for their child of no surprise.” 

Tissaia doesn’t miss the jab. She purses her lips. “My date of birth holds no meaning anymore. I see no reason to bring it up again.” 

“But you were thinking about it the last time I was here,” Yennefer counters. She sashays her hips as she walks around the table to sit, that devilish grin she’s so good at wearing looking sinfully wonderful on her.

It sends a delicious pull to Tissaia’s core. She fights not to lose herself. Instead, she thinks of the space created by the time between Yennefer’s visits, sometimes bordering on too long because of multiple months passing. She lets this cool her a little.

“I was thinking of time and how inconsequential it is now,” Tissaia dismisses, bypassing the fact that it’s come to hold greater meaning than it was supposed to. Yennefer need not know it. “How most days are exactly the same. I was simply wandering an old path in an old life that does not exist anymore.”

“Time is what we make of it, Tissaia,” Yennefer flicks the table covering up with a finger and doesn’t meet her eyes. 

“When do you leave again?” Tissaia sits down the glass now, strides forward to where Yennefer sits, and tents her fingers atop the wood grain of the table. 

Yennefer’s eyebrow shoots up, curious. Mischievousness tugs at her lips. They both fade quickly and are replaced by a visage meaning to project disinterest. Tissaia wants to roll her eyes at this game, is deigned to play it. She does it anyway.

“At first light,” Yennefer finally tells her. Tissaia nods, purses her lips. 

“Then let’s make the most of it,” Tissaia mirrors Yennefer’s words, takes her steepled fingers from the table, and laces them with Yennefer’s hand. Drags her to the recesses of a room where either only desolation or pleasure live. Nothing in between. 

Chasms do well here. In houses, in hearts. It is of no matter. Tissaia fights to swim in bliss again.

//

Yennefer leaves. She leaves, she leaves, she leaves and Tissaia has to tell herself that this is the way of things. That she isn’t exactly a person worth staying around for. 

That despite her lips and hips and the maybe part of her heart she’s let bleed out inadvertently, these things are still not a set of things that Yennefer is after in her chase for the grandest of everything still. 

And, Tissaia supposes, she cannot fault her for it even though the thoughts of her with someone else make the bottled chaos hurt even more. By this point in her very long life, she knows of yearning. How it makes the having somehow sweeter when it arrives. 

Yennefer has always taken to the Continent like it was her own, like its wonders and mysteries were personal and belonged to her. When the woman had moved the blade away from Tissaia severing the cords, she too must have become a part of all the things Yennefer thought she could have.

Because Tissaia still exists. Because the world still holds her in it. It’s this thought that sticks with Tissaia for days, long and meandering until she’s removed from her reverie by Yennefer’s serious eyes and her mouth set in a grim line. Tissaia tucks the paper her hand had been resting idly on. 

“Walk with me,” she tells Tissaia in a voice that emotions can’t be sifted from. 

As she rises from her chair, Tissaia swallows heavily when Yennefer turns to head out of the cottage door. Her heart feels like it’s leaking a trail as she follows along. As she walks to their certain end. 

//

They stand silently for a few moments, looking out over the treetops from the rock facing. Birdsong bounces amongst the canopy and the sky looks slightly hazy as the sun works its way to tuck itself into the horizon. 

Yennefer has propped a booted foot up on a large rock, knee bent, and hand resting. The creamy flesh of her leg peeks out from the end of the boot line and the beginning of the hem to her emerald iridescent dress. She squints against the dying light and finally sighs. She wipes a solitary tear away.

“I thought that I would have a house on rolling hills that butted up against mountains. That there would be bees buzzing, birds chirping. Just peace and quiet.” Her face goes pensive, then darkens. 

Tissaia tries not to feel the crack in her breast. She so desperately wants to tell her that some version of those things can be found here, that she would never betray her in such a way as she can feel the turmoil inside herself alluding to. It seems far fetched for dead women to suddenly sit up and want dreams, so Tissaia keeps her own chest darkened. Her words never come. 

“There are just some people you cannot make a life with, no matter how much you wish it to be true,” Yennefer continues. 

The weight of the parchment feels heavy in Tissaia’s pocket. Phillipa’s inked signature is even weightier. Her cheeks burn with the burden of secrets and the force of silent rage. 

“They’re audacious and always will be. While I’ve come to be on better footing with Triss over the years, the lot of them are still as blind as their leader.” Yennefer changes the subject all of a sudden, seems exceedingly pleased with herself over the wordplay and comparison. 

Tissaia startles a bit, unsure of how Yennefer could know. “There’s a saying, I suppose. Keep your friends close…”

“And your enemies closer,” she finishes and turns to look at Tissaia. “If I didn’t let death have you then, I’ll not let the Lodge have you now.” She moves her gaze again. “You have better options available for you still.”

The scoff that works its way out is anything but amused. She has been at this life of solitude and spurts of Yennefer for years. Spurts of wandering lonely as a cloud and inserted in something resembling a version of bliss whenever Yennefer decides to come near. 

“I’ve no intention of ever being a part of something that helped to bring about the end of my life as I know it. I’m sure they’re of no mind to do the same, despite what they may offer. We both ruined each other,” Tissaia shakes her head. 

“Do you remember when I told you that I couldn’t give you everything? Even though I’ve been asking for it my entire life?” The deviation away from the Lodge to this has Tissaia working to change direction for a third time.

“Yes,” she responds quietly. She wrings her hands, a normal thing now. Far removed from who she used to be. 

“All I’ve got is me,” Yennefer slowly begins. Tissaia can see her mental cogs. “I’ve got nothing to offer except my stubbornness, my sarcastic approach to the world. But I suppose…” she turns to look at Tissaia now. “I can give you what I have.”

Yennefer gives Tissaia enough time for this to sink in. Her heart starts to do that overdrive thing that it sometimes does whenever Yennefer is around, the sporadic flip that’s only come around a handful of times since she was staring down a glinting blade in her hands and ready to sever her own life. 

“What are you saying, Yennefer?” Tissaia has to ask for clarification. She doesn’t want to hedge her hopes, to skew them too far in the wrong direction. 

The woman steps into Tissaia, encircles her waist, and nudges her cheek with her nose. “I know you will let me be who I am. Then we can be us and I can be yours. That’s if you can learn to be happy like this. With...me.”

A laugh threatens to burst forth, not one attached to sarcasm but to mirth. There are no words to describe the depth of her own feelings toward what’s happening.

She should be dead. Several years ago, she held the instrument in her hand to take her own life, to rid breath from her very own lungs, and now Yennefer is asking her for some kind of forever. 

“Can you?” Tissaia finds herself volleying back. “No one must ever know where I am at. I cannot risk...someone feeling my magic. Anyone that might know of it. I’m likely to live out my life to its end here.”

“No magic, just you and I,” Yennefer murmurs. Her brows are furrowed.

Tissaia grounds out a sigh. “Yes. That would have to be the way of things if you choose this for yourself. Magic was my life. Not anymore. It would not be yours either.” 

She wonders what the probability is of Yennefer disappearing forever because of this. But she’s come back time and time again, is offering herself up to this potential life it seems. 

“This is not at all what I pictured for myself,” Yennefer breaks the growing silence. 

“And you think it is for me?” Tissaia does scoff this time. 

“Are we seriously about to argue over being together when I just offered to give up my magic for you and live in a little cabin in the fucking Kaedwen forest? Not a soul in sight except your own and somehow, I’m okay with that!” Yennefer exclaims and flails her arms. 

“What about Ciri?” 

“She’s a grown woman now. A trained fighter and practically a witcher herself.” 

The words of gusto do nothing for Yennefer’s actual tone. The melancholy curls them, strips them of whatever they were supposed to be. While her history with Geralt might be fraught with indecision and lost chances, the bond she holds with Ciri will be the toughest to mostly cut away. There is no way Tissaia can ask that of her. 

She reaches out to touch her arm, tries to steady the anguish in her fingertips, the tremor that will be there in her voice when she speaks. 

“I cannot ask you to do this,” Tissaia rakes a hand along Yennefer for what might be the last time, breaking her own heart into. “The young woman means more to you than anything.”

“Stop,” Yennefer raises a finger then, grips Tissaia’s cheek. Pushes their foreheads together like they have done hundreds of times before. “I’ll not listen to it. Not when I’m standing here asking you to let me choose you.”

Tissaia wonders if opening her throat to speak the words will go much like opening her veins, an interruption coming and she won’t get to do what she’s set out to. The first had been Yennefer’s doing. She works not to let herself be the last. 

“Then yes,” she manages to eke out. “Let’s make a life together, whatever that may be.”

On the mountain’s edge on what feels like the top of the world, Tissaia stops trying to pretend that she understands why she’s been given what she has in life when she deserves so little. Yet here she is, the most precious thing Tissaia has ever encountered actually agreeing to spend the rest of Tissaia’s mortal life with her. 

She’s being lifted and spun, Yennefer’s lips the familiarity that Tissaia has had to hold onto the memory of in the spaces between. But not anymore. 

//

There’s something to be said about fairy tales even though they don’t exist really. Not as complete wholes anyway. 

Bards and writers keep them alive, romanticize the most ordinary, and make hearts and minds think they can obtain these things too. Just like in the songs and stories. Even when only fragmented parts of them exist here and there. 

Tissaia’s life has never been filled with glitter or gilded with gold. It’s never been exactly easy or particularly rewarding. Instead, it’s been years of restraint, decades of denial. Until, well, it hasn’t been. 

She’s never told Yennefer, but she kept the knife that the woman had gently pulled from Tissaia’s blood speckled fingers on the darkest evening of her life. That she looks at it from time to time. To remember the edge. To stay aware of it but never get close to it again.

The two of them have had some good days, ones that stack to make more happiness than Tissaia has ever experienced as long as she’s been alive. But she’s been around a long time and eventually, the conversation has to be had between them. 

Because all good things come to an end someday.

“I want to float into a fog when I end. To let the mists finally have me,” Tissaia whispers against Yennefer’s chest one night. She punctuates the words with a pressing of her lips to Yennefer’s ever addicting flesh. On a night where she has grown old and Yennefer is climbing toward it too. 

“I do not wish to talk of this.” Yennefer’s voice sounds strained and Tissaia can detect the ache in it. 

“So we continue to put it off until you wake up and I’m no longer here?” She raises up on her elbows and looks down into her gentle purple eyes. Lets Yennefer play with a thin white strip of hair at her temple. She runs her nose along Yennefer’s neck.

“I’m not saying it will happen tomorrow or one hundred tomorrow’s from now. I simply do not know. Not anymore,” Tissaia shakes her head. “But I have had a lot of time to think about my end and I think it a fitting way to go.”

Yennefer weaves her fingers through the brown and gray hair now. Tissaia wonders if she regrets falling in love with someone more advanced in years than she. 

“No, I do not, so stop thinking it,” Yennefer aims to cast aside the idea. “I’ve been picking you time and time again since I was but a young woman. I’ve given my years to you gladly. I’d do it again were there another version of this life to live.

“But Tissaia...because of that, I also cannot imagine my life without you in it. You’ve been a constant since that pig farm in Vengerberg.” She swallows as tears form. “And I will tell you all of the contents of my heart now.”

Tissaia moves to let her sit up and they embrace one another, foreheads a mirror of so many other times. This is the way they have come to touch each other when the world feels like it’s closing in: in one another’s arms and in one another’s eyes. 

“I’m sure you know by now that I love you. No one can escape that with you. I think we all loved you from the very beginning,” Yennefer says wistfully, her look far off and in Aretuza again. But then she sobers. “But it’s because I’ve been in love with you that I came back to keep that knife away from you.”

Yennefer kisses her wrist then, runs her lips across the tendons and veins still intact. All because of her. 

“It is because I’ve been in love with you since the moment I woke up and you told me that I got to live that I’ve made my life here with you, just the two of us. It’s why I don’t regret it one bit.” Yennefer leans in and kisses Tissaia with the wholeness of her heart. 

“We were not supposed to be this way, you and I,” Tissaia cries into the kiss. “We were not meant to fall inexplicably and inexorably for one another.”

“I don’t know that life ever works the way we expect it to. Rarely has mine been that way. But I am forever grateful for it because this is what has meant the most to me out of all of my days.” Yennefer’s tears are drying. Her resolve to do what must be done someday arriving finally. 

“You will do as I ask then?” Tissaia can read the answer plainly on Yennefer’s face. 

“I will do it because I love you,” is Yennefer’s reply. “But prepare well when you arrive at your end because I will be looking for you in the afterlife when my own time comes.”

All of this talk should make Tissaia feel incredibly heavy, however, it does not. Instead, peace washes over her like calmly lapping waters. Every day a gift, even the lonely ones. All of them have led to this. To being able to not meet death sad and alone. To have learned Yennefer this way. To have had her for so many years. 

Yennefer was right: people are not the sum total of what can be seen. They are not their failures alone, nor their triumphs solely. It is the mixture of these things that defines the measure of who people are. 

To who Tissaia is lying in a bed with Yennefer in the thick of a forest in Kaedwen. Who they’ve become from touch, from time, from the tenderness that love has created. Because they do love each other, have been in love for almost as long as they’ve lived the same life.

Rising up again, Tissaia looks down into those deep purple eyes. The ones that show no signs of dimming anytime soon. She cups Yennefer’s cheek and kisses her softly.

“Thank you for saving me from myself,” Tissaia whispers. “You’ll never understand how incredibly much I love you.”

“I think I do,” Yennefer says, thumb grazing across Tissaia’s wrist again. “We saved each other, love.”

She manipulates Tissaia’s fingers across her own wrist, the jagged white scar there. A lifetime ago floods back. Tissaia can still close her eyes and remember the scene: the sounds and smells and what the world looked like tipped on its end as she desperately tried to keep Yennefer with a foot in the living. 

Death has looked them both in the eyes. They’ve pulled each other away as it was staring.

Tissaia’s lips attach themselves to Yennefer again. The end won’t be so bad if the path leading it up to it continues to be, wonderfully, this.


End file.
